Trust

A secret, confided by a teacher, Pietro, to his lover Teresa, an ex-student (but not to the spectator, at least not in the beginning) is the center of this film. The secret is bad enough that Teresa leaves him because of it, but will from then on threaten to reveal it, which supposedly has the power to ruin the life of the teacher. Pietro, by the way, is a passionate teacher, who later becomes famous for writing on his "pedagogy of affection". He also starts a family, marrying Teresa's math teacher. Teresa doesn't take that well.

I tend to like films driven by dark secrets (particularly of the non-magic realistic kind), so I decided to watch this, even though I didn't have all too high expectations. But the film turned out to be very good. The performance of Federica Rosselini is spectacular; her Teresa is very fascinating and even more scary, and Rosselini manages to deliver her part far from any Hollywood cliche of such a role. It would work very well in a proper horror film, which this one isn't, even if just as horrifying. Elio Germano as Pietro comes over as rather bland, but the more the film goes on, the more sense does his portrayal of Pietro make. With hindsight, the story can be seen as straight and fairly simple, and from earlier information quite a bit can be guessed, but surprisingly it managed to keep me on tenterhooks almost all the time. With all the psychological depth, allusions and allegories there is enough material and depth to sink the teeth in. One of the major draws is that we figure our over time what kind of person Pietro is, and by the end we may think of him rather differently than in the beginning.

Then we have a very special soundtrack by Thom Yorke. In some scenes the music is really very imposing. As a music lover I appreciate the quality of the music, but having such a dominating soundtrack is certainly not everybody's cup of tea. It contributes very well to the suspense (to the point of occasionally exaggerating it); in other parts, it defies expectations and comments on some scenes in a somewhat ironic manner. Chances are that all this is as it was intended, and the music alone could be a reason to watch this once more (maybe also spotting more of the visual details). The cinematography is also impressive, as we know it from Italian films.

The end of the film doesn't answer all questions. I tend to get annoyed by directors who leave important questions open if I suspect that there isn't really a realistic and convincing way to answer them. It is easy to create suspense for a lazy director who doesn't feel the need to provide a credible resolution. However I'm fine with the end of this one as enough hints are given so that I can put together an explanation for myself that makes sense. Alternatively occasionally there are parts that turn out to have happened just in Pietro's imagination so we may start to question the reality of some other things we saw, which allows for an alternative interpretation that makes sense as well. This means that we are not left with knowing everything, but enough, as far as I'm concerned, and of course much potential for thinking about this for some time.

Overall this is a suspenseful, intelligent and deep film that I liked a lot. It is not without flaws (the suspense atmosphere is sometimes overdone; not all acting is at Rosselini's level; not sure I concur with any implications regarding the education system), but these are minor. 8.6/10 rounded up.